Using Step 1 to Screen Residency Applicants: "We have a serious problem. It’s in our hands to solve"

Jul 9, 2018

Discussing the current practice of using USMLE Step 1 scores to screen residency applicants and the effects on medical students and the medical school curriculum are Academic Medicine editor-in-chief David Sklar and senior staff editor Toni Gallo (@AcadMedJournal) and four Academic Medicine authors who have written on this topic: Charles Prober, MD, Daniel London, MD, MS (@londonda), Pamela Schaff, MD (@pbs424), and Ron Ben-Ari, MD. They also discuss alternatives to this practice, including developing new metrics or data collection processes to better capture “the full richness of students,” establishing better communications channels between medical schools and residency programs, implementing a holistic review process, and changing the content of the Step 1 exam. They advocate for creating a national working group to bring together all stakeholders including trainees to design a path forward. Read more about this topic, including the articles discussed in this episode, at: https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/pages/default.aspx.